on zurich and berlin

some months ago i wrote about the horrors of germany, having spent an absolutely terrifying trip to Dusseldorf, surrounded by people who obey traffic lights, designer offices and disturbingly automated coffee machines. i have now been forced to spend time in a place even more horrifying: Zurich. it is like Dusseldorf, but somehow even worse, even more automated and efficient. after some hours, i start to twitch with a burning desire to do something "bad" like ask for a diet coke at breakfast or something, spurning the absurd "nespresso" machines in the my room and the breakfast area. my room is of course, immaculate. it has a huge working area, with a massive granite desk, so that i can even have my colleagues down to finish our presentation. the shower is disgustingly well ventilated. it really annoys me. i have a very expensive tailored Thomas Pink white blouse with me, and the problem with these expensive shirts is that they are impossible to iron and really need dry cleaning. i didnt have time to run to the dry cleaner before the trip, and the hotel doesnt have one. the shirt is clean of course, but it needs ironing, and the hotel iron just doesnt manage it. so i try my old trick of blasting hot water in the shower, hanging the shirt on a nearby rack and closing the door for some minutes. but to my utter disappointment, after nearly 10 minutes, i open the bathroom door to find not a drop of steam in sight. the bloody thing was so well ventilated that my shirt was still dry!
the rest of the trip was suitably well planned and well organised. drivers arrived on time, meetings started and ended according to schedule and everyone was polite and attentive, leaving me feeling vaguely ill and desperate to get back to the comparative civilisation of east london.
shortly after my return however, i found myself headed with the same team to Berlin. whilst my general dislike for the German lands has been well vented on these pages, i have to confess that Berlin is at least somewhat tolerable. unusually for a German city, it has just enough moments of poor urban planning to make it somewhat human. Tegel, the airport we arrived in, is actually one of the most underdeveloped airports i think you can find in Western Europe, and it is run worse than many third world ones. the city itself is quite mixed. no doubt partly-but only partly- due to the artificial divisions of the cold war, the city lacks architectural coherence. By all accounts, Unter den Linden is meant to be the main historic avenue of the city, and it certainly ends nice and dramatically with the Brandenburg gates, but it is a far cry from the Champs Elysees, Andrassy Ut, or even Tverskaia. the buildings dont seem aligned, and it is unclear why many of them are even there. Similarly, the Reichstag is a magnificent structure with its ultra modern dome, but it too seems to be at a weird angle facing nothing. yet these features seem to be what ultimately saves Berlin from being as stylised and soulless as Dusseldorf or Frankfurt. its lack of order means you can wander the streets and still potentially be surprised as you turn a corner. plus, the locals are suitably sinful to be able to construct and operate at least tolerable bars and night spots...the food is atrocious, but then it is still in Germany after all and one should not be too demanding. and unlike other German cities, Berlin does at least seem somehow liveable- it has an excellent standard of living at a low cost, and endless amounts of seemingly underinhabited spaces. and herein no doubt lies the secret to its tolerable feel, as well as its problems. Berlin is broke. it is a city of cool students and the unemployed. it would be a great place to live if you had a well paid job, but there are almost none to be found. so it thrives on its own bohemian poverty, catering to its student culture, combined with tolerable art and endless fascinating history for the tourists and generally curious. it is no doubt this poverty as well which prevents the inhabitants from developing the smarmy self satisfaction of other German cities. which makes me wonder- if Berlin ever does recover economically and prosper- will it still be a decent place to visit?